Session 2: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Underdark

Make my tree sing again...

Fresh off their victorious rescue of the bride from the clutches of the Drow, followed by their victorious rescue of the Featherin brewery from sentient fires summoned by the (now ex) Mayor, the party went back to briefly chat with the wedding party before kitting-up and heading out to find Kyone Velve, the half-drow Maid of Honor who is likely being tortured underground by a handmaiden of the Spider Queen.

The heavily beaten Axeblood Steelshovel, after some encouraging words from Nikolai [Micah], gave the group the key to his family’s home, and told them about his father’s map room, which he believed would show them the locations of any failed mining attempts that might lead deep enough to get the party where they were going. Armed with this knowledge and a tracking charm given to them by the King, the party was off.

On the way there, the party passed a crossroads, where Encounter 0 happened.

The Steelshovel household proved rather underwhelming, full of mold and poverty, though Karath [Mike] was able to find a few new rituals, as it turned out the patriarch of the Steelshovel family had attempted to dabble (poorly) in wizardry before his death.

After an extended rest (wherein nobody risked sleeping on the bug-infested beds), the party headed off to explore the 3 likeliest sites for passages to the Underdark. While tripping and slipping on some rocks along the way, the party discovered The Dark Plummet, a strange closet teleportation trap (which was a triumph. I’m making a note here: HUGESUCCESS. It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction).

Next they came across The Deep Spire, a chamber with a large differently-colored stone in the middle of it. After speaking with the confused ghost of an ancient dryad (played by Niki), they concluded that this strange spire was a petrified version of a primordial World Tree, a relic from a time before the Dawn War, before the Elves even split, when the lines between the Prime Material Plane and the Feywild had yet to be drawn. After listening to the dryad’s pleas for help restoring her tree (which many in the party were tactfully not hopeful about accomplishing), the party took a sliver of the petrified tree with them (I think Mike took possession of it) and agreed to take on the major quest RESTORETHEWORLDTREE. Good luck with that.

Finally, the party came upon the third site, The Chamber of Light, which was a super-reflective chamber at the top of a wide, deep shaft that magnified any light source (including sunlight), possibly for illumination, possibly as a warning system for those below, or possibly to use sunlight to dissuade those below from coming up. In any case, the noise they made and the arcane magics they used were sensed by a large construct below, a sort of clockwork spider thing that looked like the brainchild of several overly-ambition gnomes trying to build something they could market to dwarves. The construct turned around, creating a somewhat rickety platform (which required repairs along the way) which somewhat safely took the PCs down the large central shaft. Some deathjump spiders decided to join the party, though their lack of invitation was quickly noted and dealt with. Micah also got to try out the new Skald build for his bard, Nikolai Pyotrovich, which seemed to work well for him and the party.

As the game ended, the construct appeared to be detecting some sort of problem, which was unfortunately made obvious to all when the chamber widened, and the construct (and party) were left in mid-air, beginning a much more rapid descent into the darkness. Hmm… makes me want to have a Balrog descend with you… but that’s probably not level-appropriate.